Writ in In Ink Invisible
by Ramzes
Summary: The maiden queen, the unwanted queen, the meek queen. All these were words said and written about Aelinor Penrose, Aerys I's unfortunate queen. But words are wind, as everyone knows. And writings do lie.
1. Chapter 1

Writ in Ink Invisible

Quills and parchments, this was her life. This had always been her life. She was descended from a family that valued them more than almost anything else. Words were wind but this was only true for spoken words. Written words remained, as solid and lasting as the truth they reflected.

Or the lie.

So many lies.

All to her harm.

Twisting her into something that even she had a difficulty to recognize.

* * *

She was not Rhaena Targaryen come again, no matter what people would write later. Those who did only knew her in her time as queen when in her despair, she had turned to the Seven beseeching them to make her heart's desire come truth. But once upon a time, she had been a lively, vibrant child who had found joy in things earthly and dirty, to the despair of her septa and mother.

Well, perhaps she was like Rhaena Targaryen but people got the wrong Rhaena. The Rhaena the family always told Aelinor she resembled had been a kind, long dragonless woman but with inner strength that would put many to shame. Aelinor only had some flashes of memories of her grandmother in which only Rhaena's death was a fully formed one. The smile that she had left the world with. "Go to them," Aelinor's grandfather had said softly but even at the tender age of five, the little girl knew that Rhaena had left them long ago, living in her past as the weakness left after the summer fever claimed her mind as fully as her body. She did not recognize anybody and her whispers brought into the darkened room names that Aelinor would learn only later, forced on people who bore other names.

"You should really go out more, Aegon," she told Aerys who was staring at her, wide-eyed. "Look, does Viserys sit around all day waiting for his egg to hatch? It will, you know, never fear," she added, looking at Maekar who looked up at his mother, utterly confused. "You are a Targaryen, like all of us. Is he not, Luke?" she went on. "Looks don't matter. What matters is blood and heart… and you are a Targaryen, truly."

Baelor nodded, pressing his lips together. Years later, Aelinor would remember this scene and wonder if by this time, he had already known that he was doubted and disliked, his belonging to them questioned because of his looks. She never asked, of course. It would be terribly tactless and over the years, tact had turned into her shield.

* * *

People said she had met her fate of a hostage at King Aegon's court with unusual maturity, grace, and courage but the truth was, she was too stunned and paralyzed with fear to do or say something. She was old enough to know that her parents had somehow attracted the King's disfavour but complex concepts like hostility between father and son, and the realm dividing into ever shifting factions in which her father was one of Prince Daeron's staunchest allies escaped her and without understanding, no maturity would come. She only knew that the King demanded his young hostages, called wards for better sounding, to attend the evening feast; much later, she would understand the double warning in this but at the age of six, she could only stare at the raucously laughing faces, the brazen, nearly naked women, the drunk man who knelt on all four to lap the spilled wine off the floor, unable to give up even a drop of it, and fighting with the dogs there… She had never felt so scared. The mocking or pitying smiles landing on her made her even more scared and she dared not touch the plates in front of her, suddenly sure that should she taste them, she would be confined to the Red Keep forever and never see the Parchments again. Did the old tales not tell about such occasions? She was sure that she had read it somewhere.

Surprisingly attuned to her mood, Maekar, a year younger than her but a year more experienced in living here, pushed his own plate at her. "It's good," he said and since Aelinor knew that he had been allowed to visit his home once, she accepted that the food was harmless and ate it, although she was still scared and he had already taken more than a few bites from the plate.

* * *

What people said about her marriage would be enough to fill a book. A thick one. Fill it with lies. Pain. Humiliation.

She was a maid and remained a maid, they said. How ridiculous! As if any prince would leave thing this way, unless he was physically incapable or she was notoriously ugly. Neither of them was. Aerys just waited until she grew old enough for bedding – Aelinor would not have appreciated it if he had bedded her fourteen-year-old self!

Not that she appreciated his lack of interest to her sixteen-year-old self beyond the couplings expected of husband and wife. But claiming that she was a maid was a downright insult to her femininity and when they added the rumour that the still untouched queen prayed for a child daily, this was an insult to her intellect as well.

She was pretty. Perhaps she was not as beautiful as some of the ladies at court but she was pretty enough. More than enough for many men. But not her husband. In the beginning of their true marriage, about two years after they said the words, Aerys came to her chambers regularly, although by no means frequently, and while Aelinor could not say she was mad about the experience, it was not unpleasant either. The awareness that her children would arrive out of it made it even less unpleasant.

But the children did not appear. Never. Instead, Dyanna Dayne did. And her arrival showed Aelinor in cruelly bright light what was missing in her own marriage. Maekar was mad about Dyanna, this much was clear. And although she was just a year older than Aelinor had been at the time of her wedding, her married life had started the night after Maekar had wrapped the Targaryen cloak around her shoulders; just a few weeks later, she was already with child while Aelinor was just starting to realize that Aerys' interest in her might never increase… and she was still not increasing.

She had never resented anyone as she resented Dyanna and Maekar in these days of their early happiness when thick walls were pressing against her from all sides.

Perhaps "hatred" was too strong a word but envy was definitely there. She wanted to be happy like Dyanna or if this was too much, at least like Jena. Or even Alice.

Jena.

Over time, her envy of Jena made her realize how pitiful her life had become. She'd rather have Jena's string of miscarriages and only one living babe – but be loved and treated the way Jena was. Instead, as she turned twenty and her four years of marriage had yet to see a delay in the arrival of her moon blood, Aerys slowly withdrew from her bed, leaving her alone and longing for what she had never had and what she had barely touched, sometimes so tantalizingly close that she could, to her despair, feel it slip between her fingers. Motherhood. Femininity.

Was this the time the book of her life started being written with not just false words but invisible ink?

* * *

 **Author's Note. So, this was the result of a brief visit to "my" forgotten old/new Targaryens. I don't know if I'd be able to update as planned but if not, Merry Christmas to everyone!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Writ in Ink Invisible**

Chapter 2

Quills and parchments, that was what great romances were made of, as much as rumours and songs. Made purer than what heart produced, as well, for it produced love. Love were sad and grand, and tearing noble hearts in two, and leading to the ruin of nations because of the heartache of the ones leading them – according to parchments. Aelinor knew it to be a lie. Love was not like this at all. Love was cruel and predatory, love was selfish, grief-inducing but also soaring on the wings of ecstasy. Love took out a person's worst traits, as well as their best. And love left them so very vulnerable. Quills and parchments did not reflect this. Sometimes, they outright lied, as Daenerys Martell could testify.

Sometimes, they erased a love by never seeing it. Which was for the best. Like in Aelinor's case.

Was it not what archivists and bards loved? A princess in black and red and a white knight?

* * *

He entered her life when he entered the Red Keep. Unlike any other Kingsguard, he had a recognized child – or rather, he had had. He had left the Vale because he had been unable to pass by the two tombs, one for his wife and one for his young son, every day. He came to King's Landing to find oblivion. He found Aelinor instead – at the time, the rumours that Aerys had never even consummated the marriage were already abundant and when he first bedded her, about a year afer they first met, he looked surprised, as if he expected that at nineteen, she was still a maid. Aelinor turned her head away, the bliss of his embrace darkened by the stark realization just how humiliating her situation was.

She set about analyzing her attraction to him calmly and unbiasedly, as she tried to do with all things. He was a great warrior but he was not the only one. He was handsome but there were others who were more handsome still. He was smart and book-inclined but not nearly as much as Aerys.

But he knew that life was to be lived in full and not confined to reading about other people's lives and futures. He was one who had had it all before and knew what he was giving up by donning the white cloak.

He was the only man of Aelinor's acquaintance who considered the white cloak vastly inferior to other things, had sought it only after he had lost the things that had given his life his meaning and colour.

 _Lady Courage_ , he called her, caressing her hair as tenderly as he did Lady Forlorn and even more, and this kept surprising her. She saw her life as enduring. Enduring was what one did. But she did not mind that he considered her strong.

Perhaps Aerys had strength in his own way as well. He had stopped visiting her bed when conception did not happen but he kept caring for her, discussing books and scrolls with her as often as before and discreetly looking at the other side when she sought to fill the void in her life elsewhere. He might not have done it and no one would have as much as thought badly about him.

She did not think he would suffer a child born to her by someone else, though. If he even entertained the idea that the fault might lie with him. This was one of the things they never discussed. But once or twice, she forgot to drink her moon tea after lying with Gwayne but nothing happened. Perhaps she was not particularly fecund. This was another question that parchments could not answer.

Would not answer.

So many omissions.

* * *

She started begging the Mother to bless her with child once she was crowned Queen. She did not have much hope, for her best years had passed but she had some. Aerys had started visiting her bed again and her fears had turned baseless: Gwayne's ghost did not appear to haunt her marital bed, although she longed for him with ever increasing despair after each passionless bedding. But not during. Sometimes, she dreamed of him as he was in their last night together, in the storm of Daemon's rebellion. Never the gaunt, unable to walk shadow that had been returned from Redgrass Field only to die from his wounds.

She had never desired another man. Yes, sometimes she felt a pang of lust towards young knights but it was not desire. Just a spur of the moment thing. She had never bedded another after his death, so she had little to compare her nights with Aerys to. She just prayed for a child. And people thought her as stupid as not to know what was needed to obtain this child. The Mother was useless, as shocked as it would leave her septa to hear her say, if Aerys did not do his job. He did. But this child would still not come.

Her prayers became even more feverish as the lords petitioned Aerys to repudiate her, find someone whom he could feel desire for. If he did, she would likely kill herself, rather than live with the humiliation.

"You're a fool," Maekar said curtly. "And your fears are unfounded. You know how Aerys is and you know he's a just man. The fault isn't yours and you're wasting your time thinking that he'd ever shift it onto you."

"Oh, so he's a just man now?" she fired back. "Is this why you're storming off to sulk? Because you believe he's so just?"

He glared at her before storming off to sulk for a good number of years. But at least he turned out to be right.

* * *

He turned out to be right about something else as well: he had predicted that the one wielding all the power would not be Aerys but Brynden Rivers. Lord Bloodraven. And while Aelinor gladly acknowledged his great talents, she vehemently disagreed with the realm being basically left to fend for itself as he focused on Bittersteel and his possible intentions. But her disagreement meant nothing to him, as long as it did not come from Aerys. And Aerys could not be bothered with such things as he read on and on about his prophecies. Aelinor fumed at finding herself inhabiting the role of a mere decoration through ceremonies but that was what she was. Everyone flocked to Brynden and Shiera Seastar and the wiser ones curried favour with Alys as well. Alys who enjoyed her status of queen in waiting a little too openly for Aelinor's taste.

She did not feel sorry for Alys when Rhaegel died – she was hard enough to be able to hate without compulsion and anyway, it was her husband's status that Alys loved, far more than the man himself. But she grieved for Aelor and Aelora, as bitter as she had been when they had been openly declared heirs because this was equal to declaring her uselessness openly while Aerys had tried to convince her that this was a mark of his great esteem for her – after all, he might have just left the matter open, letting everyone believe that in the event of her death, he could remarry to a young woman who might give him an heir.

"Perhaps I'm too simply made to grasp this peak of thought," she spat and stormed off. Aerys, left behind, undoubtedly thought she was behaving like a petulant child, much like he had thought of Maekar years ago.

Maekar…

Now, there was one who did not like being proclaimed heir any more than she liked it. "I know I'm not perfect," he spat just in the night before the ceremony, "but did he really need to punish me like this?"

At this time, she had become so used to her uselessness being rubbed in her face like this that she did not even care anymore. She did not tell him that Aerys did not see this as a punishment. He already knew it.

At the time, this was mere formality; at Aerys' unexpected death just a few years later, it became her chance to make something of herself. Something that would make her more than a mere footnote in parchments written by others.


	3. Chapter 3

**Writ in Ink Invisible**

Chapter 3

Aelinor walked the length of the Red Keep, trying not to look at the black hangings hiding everything, blocking the very sun. They were a mark of hypocrisy, of course, since no one mourned Aerys this much, or marks of etiquette which had started being the same to Aelinor. Everyone that came her way bowed low and looked away, as if she was already as dead as her husband – everyone but the few maesters that she came across. Their gaunt faces and slumped shoulders told her that they were truly mourning Aerys' passing – or at least the privileged position they had enjoyed under him!

Her father would have been terrified if he could hear her thoughts. The Penroses were supposed to revere learning and its priests. But her father had had other things in his life as well, not a spouse consumed by said learning.

He had never been a footnote – and he had never meant for her to be a footnote either.

During the first half of her long walk that left the elder one of the two ladies trailing her gasping for breath, Aelinor thought with irritation that Maekar should not have been such a stickler for propriety and just taken over the King's chambers already. This way, her trip would have been much shorter.

During the second half, she fought the urge to spin around and head back, the reality of the last twelve years when she had been limited in each and every way where influence was concerned surging to her mind and telling her that it was too late, too late, she had no experience and she would fail if she started learning now… She might have been cherished by Aerys but she had not enjoyed his trust over Bloodraven. Not in the matters of politics.

When she asked for an audience with the new King, her voice shook in her own ears, but to the guards and servants, it sounded composed enough, it seemed, for no one gave her an odd look. She settled in a chair and prepared to wait. She and Maekar had not parted at the best of terms the last time they had truly spoken, with Saryl Lothston's dead body between them and the maesters looking around for a place to hide, the light glinting off the sharp knives in their hands. Aelinor did not consider the brief formal words they had exchanged in the presence of hundreds of others in the wake of Aerys' death a true conversation. Maekar would not be Maekar if he failed to make use of this chance to get a petty revenge over… what? It was too early for him to have gotten reconciled with the fact that Aelinor had never been unjust to the dead woman, that nature had failed Saryl long before she had found her way to the maester's tables, a dead lesson. Nature. Not Aelinor. Maekar was good at seeing what he wanted to see, though.

To her surprise, she got ushered in in mere minutes, in a chamber where the sun was already going down but the candles had yet to be lit. She made a curtsey, surprised at how easy it had come to her when she had expected that she would rail inwardly at the injustice of it. She should have had a son to ascend instead of Maekar who did not even _want_ the throne.

"Sit down," Maekar said curtly.

She did.

"You wanted to see me, I was told."

She glanced at him. Since Aerys' death, he seemed to have aged with years… but it had started with her death, of course. The woman who had not been a true woman, as it had turned out. Saryl Lothston.

"We didn't do it because this was our wish," Aelinor heard herself say. "This was her wish, to be given over to the maesters. Aerys wanted to see what she had expected them to find… but we had no idea we would see this."

"Or _not_ see, as it turned out," the new King said but there was none of the anger that had just poured off him when he had strode in and asked what in the seven hells they had been doing, as the ugly wound – bloodless, of course – still gaped in the body of his longtime companion, revealing the empty place where an womb should have been. Aelinor remembered how she had recoiled. "I know," Maekar said, to her surprise. "She sometimes spoke of wondering how many girls had been born like her. Like her, they would have been too ashamed to speak out. Just suffer. She was just the one who would have wanted to help them in her death by giving herself to the maesters to examine. I'm sorry I was like this. I never learn, it seems."

Oh but he did. It had been even worse at Dyanna's death. Half of the legends about his harshness and cruelty had arisen just then. Of course, at the time he had been twenty years younger and newer to grief.

She did not know what to say but the air between them felt clearer now. Aelinor looked at him squarely. "So, what do you intend to do now?" she asked. "I suppose Alys has already approached you with the offer of wedding Daeron to Daenora?"

He gave a sudden, harsh laughter. "You've been so reconciled in the last years that I forgot what a tigress you are!"

"Aerys didn't think so," Aelinor said, not caring to hide her bitterness. After all, he was likely the one person in the Seven Kingdoms who was more embittered than her. She had never been given the chance to prove her merits; he had done so over and over, only to be overlooked and overshadowed not due to his deeds but his temper and was it not the same as not having done it at all? Aelinor had little doubts as to what archives would say about him one day. Everything, every little thing he did would be further diminished – it had already been long before Ashford; she had as little doubt that he would do well in his new occupation because he did everything well as she did that the stain of Baelor's death would leak and soak in into very accomplishment of his, painting it black. He would be the first one to tell her that this was what he deserved. But Aelinor was certain that she had not deserved any of the things that had happened to her. The grief she felt for Aerys surprised her because all those things had come to her from his hands.

"I never understood most of the things Aerys did," Maekar replied. If she had heard it from any other man, Aelinor would think they were trying to flatter her; with him, it was just a statement of fact.

"So?" she asked.

"So what? Ah, you mean Alys. The two of you could never get along. But yes, you're right, she approached me. And I said no."

Aelinor started breathing a little easier. She did not think she could live through this if Alys received any precedence over her, as childish as it was.

"I suppose you're going to wed Daeron to Tyrosh instead?" she asked and he gave her a long look.

"I'm glad to see that the years you spent in isolation did not damage your wits," he said. "Yes, my lady, that's what I'm doing."

Aelinor's relief grew. The girl could not be a proper principal lady in this court, she had been unable to even when Valarr had been alive. She still had much to learn about Westeros.

"So, did you decide who's going to fill in for me?" she asked. Despite the casual words, her tone was very serious. "Or rather, should I say for me and Shiera Seastar fused in one? A king needs a queen and we both know Kiera is quite unsuited. Has the parade started?"

Maekar laughed again, this time with some true merriment. "Indeed! They've been parading girls as young as sixteen. Woman-children. I think they expect of me to go down the road of the aging man infatuated with a beautiful girl. Not going to happen but they don't know it yet. I have no idea what I'm going to do but a child queen is not in the plans."

A young royal mistress was likely not in the plans either! The only time Aelinor could remember him taking interest in girls was when he had been a boy. And even then, it had not been girls. Just a girl. Singular. As to beauty, Saryl Lothston had not been the most beautiful woman in Westeros but he had kept faith with her for over fifteen years, to the best of Aelinor's knowledge.

"Perhaps I could be in the plans, then?" she asked and he paused, merriment fading from his face. "It's going to wrap up the matter of the principal lady nicely. And you'll be rid of the fathers of potential future queens as well."

She did not need to say that this way, he would give his daughters the freedom to live their own lives, build their families with their new husbands in peace. The girls were young and in love. They did not care to play hostesses of the entire court. And if he gave Aegon's Betha this position unofficially, it would get ugly between the girl and Kiera of Tyrosh later. Aelinor had seen this happen once when she was young – and of course, she had been a silent watcher.

 _Not this time. I won't be pushed aside again. I'll be more than an afterthought, a footnote._

Maekar looked at her. "You'll enjoy seeing their faces when they hear that you're the new queen and aren't going anywhere, won't you?"

"But you won't enjoy rubbing their noses in your newfound power despite the things you know they said about you?"

He shrugged. "No," he said and she had no reason to not believe him. Bitterness was something that they had in common but they dealt with it in very different ways. For a long time, she did not say anything.

"I'll do it," he suddenly said. "I'll wed you in the Great Sept. I'll give you the chance to leave the mark you so desire – and I'm going to relish Brynden's face when he finds out," he added and Aelinor laughed, not without malice. In all her dealings with the Hand of the King, she had always come up the loser.

Going back all this long way was even harder than coming here because she wanted to laugh in everyone's face as they speculated behind their palms just when she'd head back for the Parchment to die as obscurely as she had lived.

She did not know what future held for her. But she had the quill of her life in her hand, for a while, at least. And she would write it bold and big – as bold and big as she knew how.

She was still Aelinor Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.


End file.
